


things the ocean taught me

by kemia



Category: Asagao Academy: Normal Boots Club
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Kissing, One Shot, idk theyre gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 07:48:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8154602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kemia/pseuds/kemia
Summary: mai takes hana with her on an extravagant island vacation, but they both manage to get caught up in little things anyway.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i'm bad at writing kisses but i'm gay and seek any opportunity to project gay into the world ♥

“I … don’t think your parents like me very much.”

“What? No way, Hana, there’s no way they don’t like you. They’re just … _not so great_ at showing affection.”

Bare toes, painted up in baby pink and powder blue respectively, skim where the tide meets the shore. The night, void of their typical chatter, was far from silent, the regular sounds of the ocean crashing together with the brush of the breeze. Hana began meekly squishing footprints into the wet sand, attention completely occupied by the soft texture. Mai catches herself watching the strange mixture of stress and calm on her best friend’s face, lips pursing once - twice - before she brings herself to look away, settling on one of millions of stars.

“Why did you bring me on a vacation like this, anyway? I didn’t really do anything to deserve it.”

Mai lifts her hand to set on Hana’s shoulder, jostling it slightly, playfully.

“You’ve been through a lot recently, you **one hundred-percent** deserve it.” Fingers lock together as she stretches her arms wide and high above her head. “And so do I! Man, I went so hard for finals, I’ve honestly been looking forward to this forever.”

Hana only makes a halfway chuckle of agreement, and the silence settles again.

Why was this suddenly so _awkward?_ Mai, usually always stuck with gossip sitting on the tip of her tongue, can’t bring herself to carry on more than occasional small talk. Perhaps it was just the atmosphere of the evening, stars like stagnant flickering candles, the hum of the sea like a lullaby. Perhaps it was … well, there were a _lot_ of factors.

She knows Hana loves nights of peace, when she can retreat into herself, but not _too_ far - just enough where the world around is balanced and nothing hurts like it tends to. This beach has always been one of her favorites for exactly that reason; it was the unexpected silence that no one thought they needed, but cherished so dearly once they found it. Mai had known almost immediately that once their summer break rolled around, this should be the first place to bring her.

Even so, Mai continues to helplessly probe at that selfish worry at the back of her mind that maybe, just _maybe,_ she invited Hana to buffer the interactions with her parents. When they’d all eaten together earlier, it was hard to make heads or tails of it. Her parents weren’t rude with a guest (they never were), but Mai continued to uphold that same emotional distance in the sparse conversation while Hana gawked at the mere concept of lobster for a midday meal. She knew the two of them wouldn’t see much of her parents again after that. As much as she hated it, Mai also preferred it … Alone time with her practical other half was always welcome.

 _Right,_ she convinces herself, _Hana deserves this. There’s no way I’d use her for something like that. She deserves so much; this is the very least of those things._

The silence served its purpose.

“Hana?”

Teal eyes touch together with hers. She somehow, vaguely, manages to keep her cool. _What was Hana to her?_

Hana was a lot of things. Hana was genuine and capable of the sort of kindness and trust that she had never known in her life. In her sphere of the world, they cultivated millionaires and facades and an idea that everyone would be out to get you one day. Mai was beyond grateful to have someone around her who had never known luxury, perhaps only because now she finally met someone who saw people as opposed to assets. It was something Asagao needed. It was a perspective she was endlessly grateful for.

But, beyond being a change of pace, what was she? The small pop-song details cross her mind first. _The glint of her eyes, the gentle pink of her cheeks that managed to always match her hair, her beyond sensitivity and unprompted kindness, the shape of her profile against the moonlight ..._

Mai moves her hands where they were planted at her sides and crushes them into her lap as she sits up, glancing toward the ocean only briefly before smiling so gingerly it was nearly unbecoming.

“I wanna thank you again. Not just for being here with me, I mean, right _now,_ but for always being there for me. I’ve been trying to do the same, since, well, you know the people at Asagao can be really … ugh.”

Mai was not known for being at a loss for the right words, and Hana, with a breezy perception, makes quick note of it. She can read by the anticipatory twitch of her Mai’s mouth that there’s more coming, and so she softly pushes forward her initiative to make sure she gets her word in edgewise.

“Mai, you’re the best person I know. No matter what, you always support me and help me through things … even when I make obviously bad decisions. You make me feel like it’s okay to try and be me again.” A pause. “S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to take the conversation. I’m just saying, I don’t think you should be thanking me.”

The stillness of the seaward air that rushes by feels like a glacier against’s Mai’s arms, against her ears. There was Hana again with modesty, so genuine with every word she spoke it was as if her tongue had never touched a lie.

There had been some more words on her own mind, but she had to suppose they had been covered and closed. She feels her eyes swim around, despite them never moving away from Hana’s face. She feels outside of her body … like whatever is making her body move the way it is now is beyond anything but divine control.

The ocean continues to roar gently at their front, sand flowing in each direction to accommodate Mai’s sudden shifting weight. The cold in her body disappears with the warmth that courses through her palm, now pressed atop Hana’s, gingerly but with an oddly placed ferocity and passion that could end the world.

Kisses aren’t new to Mai, but this is something beyond comprehension - beyond cohesion. It’s as if her existence had gone up in smoke, and all that remains are the simplest of sensations … There’s the sweetly bitter hint of green tea from an hour before, and the gentle brushing as the lips against hers waver before gaining a burst of unrivaled confidence … The lack of everything else outside of that becomes so prevalent when she pulls her head back, eyes wide and wondering as she tries to assess what Hana is thinking alongside the marathon her mind was running, tripping over its own shoelaces.

Their faces are still way too close for her to keep being silent, trying to avoid the infamously awkward kiss-and-run, and in a natural burst lacking underlying thought she snickers, squeezing her eyes shut in a bright, conspicuous grin.

“All you had to say was ‘You’re welcome,’ you know.”

Two personalities meshing as theirs did was unprecedented, but inevitable. Mai had figured a while ago, perhaps from the first day they met, that they were destined to be the duo no one expected. Such was fate, such was anime tropes. She knows that this is their twist in the grand formula; she knows she's the best friend in love with the main character. Yet, she’s perfectly content with that.

Hana, an all-new shade on the spectrum of red, recovers from the shock far slower, expression frozen into an incomprehensible jumble of conflicting nonverbal cues. But as the underlying anxieties began to stew in her stomach, a panicked shock melts into a meek smile framed in pink, looking out where the sky met the sea.

“... Well, I didn’t think ‘You’re welcome’ was enough.”

“Maybe … we both overdid it?”

“No … it was fine.”

“Just _fine?”_

Mai quickly tugs on the strings of her bikini as she stands, then outstretches a hand.

“Well, vacation just started, so ... We’ll _work on it_.”

Hana is almost caught off guard by the sudden nonchalance, but takes it in stride, placing their hands together. That was the Mai she knew and loved. No matter what decisions lay in her past and in her future, Mai was her constant. They were the unexpected variables, the ones that, together, made for an unexpectedly incredible combination.

Or maybe the ocean was making her hear things.

“... _Yeah, you’re right._ ”


End file.
